With the automation of industrial processes and systems, e.g., control of machinery on factory assembly lines, control of chemical processes, control of heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, and control of lighting fixtures, different processes often use different products to monitor and control the different processes and systems. For example, different firmware images and/or different product references may be used to provide the communication for different products with different operating environments. A product typically includes a controlling device with a communications interface that interacts with a specific communications environment. The communications environment may include a fieldbus supporting a designated protocol, e.g., Modbus/TCP or EtherNet/IP so that the product can interact with remote devices. With traditional systems, a different communications interface is often needed for different communications environments. Consequently, each communications environment often requires different firmware and/or hard-coded support, thus resulting in additional development effort for each newly-supported product, even though there may be substantial commonality among products.